Four Wesleyan students charged after MDMA overdoses

Four Wesleyan University students were arrested Tuesday night in connection with the MDMA, or Molly, overdoses that sent a dozen of their fellow students to the hospital over the weekend.

Eric Lonergan, 21; Andrew Olson, 20; Zachary Kramer, 21; and Rama Agha Al Nakib, 20, were immediately suspended from school after their arrests, NBC Connecticut reports. "The university takes allegations of the distribution of drugs seriously and is cooperating with state and local officials," Wesleyan President Michael Roth said in a statement. "We will do everything we can to make our community as safe as possible."

Two of the students who were taken to Hartford Hospital on Sunday are still receiving treatment, and investigators are trying to determine which chemicals were in the MDMA that made them so ill. "This particular batch may have had a mixture of several kinds of designer drug chemicals, making the health risks unpredictable and treatment to combat the effects complex and problematic," Middletown Police Chief William McKenna said. The four students will appear in court March 3.

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.